A shadow wedding encourages you and your partner unload all the things you hate about each other, a week before the wedding, in a ceremony in front of your closest friends.

Engagement party. Bridal shower. Hen’s night. Buck’s night. All fairly standard pre-wedding traditions.

And then there’s the ‘Shadow Wedding’, a new trend designed to set you up for a life of matrimonial bliss. How? By encouraging you and your partner unload all the things you hate about each other, a week before the wedding, in a ceremony in front of your closest friends.

It’s a foolproof plan.

But if you’re still not convinced, here are the basic facts.

The Shadow Wedding is essentially a pre-wedding wedding, designed to be a counterpoint to the “light wedding” (read: the normal, lovely ceremony) a week or so before the big day.

The idea has apparently been around for a while, but has been developed (and commercialised) by husband and wife Jim Benson and Jessica Wolk Benson. The Bensons are both therapists, and before their wedding they wanted to make sure that the aired all their niggling worries about their future – and dealt with the problems head-on with humour.

For example, Jim told Jessica at their Shadow Wedding: “I vow, Jessica, to remain distant and aloof throughout our marriage, preferring that you – as the woman – take your rightful place as the emotional barometer for our relationship. And, in fact, I’m going to ask you to feel all of my unfelt feelings as well as all of your own.”

Jessica vowed to Jim: “I vow to demand that we return every single year to my family for the holidays solely out of obligation; a sense of no choice, no freedom but absolute, complete burden. And I will force you to come with me whether you want to or not.”

They also wore their ugliest clothes, exchanged pieces of trash in the place of rings, and got their friends to throw mulch at them. So, pretty much the opposite of the wedding on the big day.

These days, the Bensons run a Shadow Weddings service, where – for a fee between $2,500 to $7,500 – they will help other happy couples share all the things about their partner that make then unhappy. On their website they explain:

Jessica and Jim Benson

It might sound totally crazy to ‘vow’ to the love of your life a bunch of terrible things right before your wedding – but the Bensons say it isn’t exactly a vow. In fact, it’s a way of acknowledging that you will make an effort not to do those things. SFGate writes:

Of course, theirs is the danger that these promises become self-fulfilling prophecies – and promising to treat your partner terribly is a less than ideal way to enter into your marriage. Some writers have also pointed out that a Shadow Wedding could be considered pointless, because isn’t that what dating is supposed to be about?

Tracy Moore writes for Jezebel:

So is a Shadow Wedding a completely pointless exercise, and a waste of money? Or is it a chance to head into years of wedded bliss, knowing that you’ve been completely honest and open with each other?

Do you think Shadow Weddings are an unnecessary extra, or something that will help make your “light wedding” even more light-hearted?